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NEW LONDON – It seemed like it had been much longer, but finally for the first time in seven weeks an opponent consistently kicked to St. Paul senior Joe Graziani. The hungry captain then easily fed on the punts, returning one 76 yards for a touchdown, a second for 19 yards in which it appeared the speedster slipped with more ample running room to spare, then followed that up with a 64-yard return that ended up being called back on an illegal block in the back, but Graziani then later scored on a 7-yard run to make up for it in the Flyers 57-0 win at New London Friday night. All the returns were in the first half. "We just made a plain mistake kicking in No. 45's direction," New London head coach Brent Besancon said. "It was definitely not intended that way, that's for sure. But sometimes the ball doesn't bounce in your direction I guess. St. Paul is an excellent football team head-to-toe. They do everything right." With the win, St. Paul improved to 8-1 overall and 6-0 in the FC and will host Monroeville (6-3, 6-0) for the Firelands Conference championship Oct. 27. Meanwhile, New London fell to 5-4 overall and 4-2 in the FC, and though eliminated in the conference standings with the loss, the Wildcats can still finish with its first winning season in 12 years with a win at home against South Central (4-5, 3-3) next week. The win for St. Paul also continued a recent streak that has been unmatched in school history, as for the fifth straight season the Flyers have qualified for the Division VI playoffs, as the win over the Wildcats unofficially clinched a playoff spot in Region 21 while a win against Monroeville will clinch the Flyers sixth first round playoff game hosted at Warren Whitney Field. The Flyers broke it open with 40 points in the middle two quarters, but afterwards, it was the defense getting the attention of head coach John Livengood. The Flyers yielded just 107 total yards of offense (16 passing) to a New London offense that had been averaging 34 points per game during a 3-game winning streak that was snapped. In the six FC wins, the Flyer defense has allowed just six touchdowns, only two of which were given up by the starting defensive unit. "The defense has been playing great and I can't say enough about them," Livengood said. "They've been rock solid for the last month or so and since the EC loss, they've been impressive and have been playing well the last four or five weeks and the offense had good balance." Below is a complete rundown of the Flyer scoring - Wes Stein 30 field goal,
5:39 1st Graziani raised his season touchdown total to 27 in the win while also picking up 93 yards on 12 attempts while Wilde finished with 87 yards on 17 attempts. Schwieterman finished 3-of-7 passing for 60 yards with three different receivers catching passes in Stein (1-22), Masser (1-15) and Wilde (1-23). Livengood said the complete focus was on getting past a good New London team, not on setting up the FC title game with Monroeville. "This was all about New London," he said. "They are a very good football team and their coach is doing a very nice job here. They played a very aggressive game and this was a hard-fought physical game. We'll start Monday with working on Monroeville. The focus now was on New London and we weren't looking at it any other way."
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